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" I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular. "
Orhan Pamuk
Enjoy
First-Person
Characters
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" The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king's power or, later, people's power. "
Orhan Pamuk
Habit
Civilization
People
" Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile. "
Orhan Pamuk
Smile
Prove
Respect
" There's been quite a clear upswing in nationalist sentiments. Everyone is talking about it, in Turkey as well. "
Orhan Pamuk
Everyone
Clear
Well
" I came across humanity in Istanbul, and all I know about life comes from Istanbul, and definitely, I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me, and it's me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi. "
Orhan Pamuk
Writing
Life
I Am
" I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. "
Orhan Pamuk
Love
Life
Work
" To appropriate an invention, be it artistic or technical, you have to have at least a part of your spirit embracing it so radically that you somehow change. "
Orhan Pamuk
Your
Change
Invention
" I have the legacy of my father and his nocturnal automatic waking up. But I like those periods. I immediately have a different vision of humanity and my life. "
Orhan Pamuk
Vision
Life
Father
" First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects. "
Orhan Pamuk
Stories
End
First
" The fueling of anti-Turkish sentiment in Europe is resulting in an anti-European, indiscriminate nationalism in Turkey. "
Orhan Pamuk
Europe
Sentiment
Nationalism
" The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup. "
Orhan Pamuk
Challenge
Political
Find
" I wrote 'My Name is Red' just to remember painting, where the hand does it before the intellect. When I'm captive to it, I'm a happier person. Kierkegaard tells us that a happy person is someone who lives in the present; the unhappy person, someone who lives either in the past or the future. "
Orhan Pamuk
Future
Past
Name
" At first my publisher had reservations about publishing it in the form you are familiar with. "
Orhan Pamuk
Publishing
You
First
" Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe. "
Orhan Pamuk
Well
Hand
Need
" I don't much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I'm not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual. "
Orhan Pamuk
Power
Respect
Take
" Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations. "
Orhan Pamuk
Life
People
Man
" If a writer is to tell his own story - tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people - if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art - this craft - he must first have been given some hope. "
Orhan Pamuk
Art
Hope
People
" I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels - more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul. "
Orhan Pamuk
Different
Feeling
Real
" I believe in a world where there are no heroes, and I've read and know humanity a lot. There are moments that I admire in a person courage, intellect, hard work. These are the qualities I admire in an intellectual, in a writer, and there are so many people who have these things. "
Orhan Pamuk
Courage
Hard Work
People
" These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people's feeling that they are not being represented. "
Orhan Pamuk
Political
People
Poverty
" Language is me, in a way. Really, I feel it. "
Orhan Pamuk
Really
Me
Way
" I see Turkey's future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries. "
Orhan Pamuk
Many
I See
Turkey
" When I write, I feel that I'm writing with my intellect. When I paint, I think it's some other force making me paint. I - as I wrote in my novel 'My Name is Red' - watch with amazement what my hand is doing on the paper, what kind of line, what kind of strange, beautiful thing it's doing in spite of my will, so to speak. "
Orhan Pamuk
Writing
Beautiful
Me
" I want to describe the psychological state of the people in a certain city. "
Orhan Pamuk
Certain
Want
People
" Museums are western inventions where the rich and the powerful or the government and the state tend to exhibit the signs and symbol and images of their culture. "
Orhan Pamuk
Culture
Powerful
Rich
" Self-hatred is OK. I have self-hatred, too. It's OK. What's bad is if you don't know how to get out of it, don't know how to manage it. Self-hatred is, in fact, a good thing if you can clearly see the mechanism of it, because it helps you to understand others. "
Orhan Pamuk
Know
Understand
See
" Let us say in the pocket of one of my old coats I find a movie ticket from many years ago. Once I see the ticket, not only do I remember that I saw this movie, but also scenes from this movie, which I think I have entirely forgotten, come back to me. Objects have this power, and I like it. "
Orhan Pamuk
Think
Say
Me
" I consider myself Istanbul's storyteller. My subject matter is my town. I consider it my job to explore the hidden patterns of my city's clandestine corners, its shady, mysterious places, the things I love. "
Orhan Pamuk
Myself
Hidden
Love
" One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way. "
Orhan Pamuk
Busy
Society
People
" Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it. "
Orhan Pamuk
Moment
Life Is Short
Respect
" We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing, or provocative films, I'm worried, not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are killed. We're very sorry for that. "
Orhan Pamuk
Judge
People
Some People